Phil and Daniel are playing the scene so naturally and easily. Two gay men singing some of the world’s most romantic music to each other brings out a vulnerability and honesty in Daniel and Phil as performers, while feeling like a comic transgression of the unwritten rules of opera.Īt the end of the rehearsal, which takes place in a tiny room in the West End of London, I look at our website describing this production as a “queer reinvention” of Puccini and wonder, in the light of what’s happening in the rehearsal room, if that’s the right line to take. I realise they actually have very different vocal qualities, which sharpens their distinctive spirits as characters. But as we rehearse, Daniel’s Rodolfo becomes a confident, boastful figure prone to exaggeration and sentiment, while Phil’s Mimi is a tentative, uneasy presence who ultimately sees himself and the world with more mature eyes than his enthusiastic lover. Having directed a much more conventional Bohème 30 years ago, I was concerned that casting two singers of the same voice type might flatten the colours and dynamics of the duet.
In our new English-language version, Rodolfo, a tenor role, meets Lucas, an online hook-up whose friends have given the nickname Mimi, and who is also sung by a tenor. It’s O Soave Fanciulla from Puccini’s La Bohème, one of the most performed scenes in the opera repertoire, written for a male and a female voice. I ’m listening to two tenors – Philip Lee and Daniel Koek – sing a love duet.